This is a post about our first trip to New York City together, mostly aimless wanderings and very tired feet. We took the bus for free, thanks to a megabus promotion, and we walked around all day with no real goals in mind. "Hey, that's on 30 Rock!" says Jory. Taken near the Rockefeller Center. Actually maybe it is the Rockefeller Center? Like I said, aimless wandering! Now, prepare for some blurry pictures, didn't want to have my hands out of my pockets for too long...

Hi Jory!

Behind me is the skating rink. While we were in this area we managed to visit the Nintendo World Store and the Lego World Store, haha. Mostly these visits were to keep warm, because it was freezing on this particular day in late January.

Dumb faces. I didn't take any pictures of the lunch we had, but it was AMAZING. We went to Katsuhama, a Japanese tonkatsu restaurant we got there early enough to beat the lunch crowd, because as soon as we sat down people started waiting in line to get in to this little place. I had chicken katsu and it was really good, Jory had whatever the special was! It was a whole meal with tonkatsu (pork) and soup and lots of little sides.

Dumber faces. This trip was kind if funny because we did a lot of Japanese things--we had Japanese food for lunch and dinner (Katsu, then Ramen), and we visited MUJI and Kunokuniya Bookstore. Those were the things I did plan, of course. Philadelphia is pretty devoid of (non sushi) Japanese things, so I got my fix in New York. Of course I didn't take pictures of any of these things.

We went to the New York Public Library, which was really quite amazing. They had this awesome exhibit at the time called Radioactive, which was artwork by students from Parsons and their teacher, Lauren Redniss about the lives of Pierre and Marie Curie, a subject matter I enjoy.

Some images of the exhibit.

My blurry face.

I loved that the included ephemera from the library in the exhibit.

Pneumatic tubes! The NYPL is so amazing!

This is my favourite part of old buildings.

Starting to get dark. We got there in the morning and our bus left at like 9 or 10 that night, it was so long to walk around for! We planned on relaxing in coffee shops and things, but every single one we passed was FULL. It was so annoying! And we couldn't sit outside because it was freezing. We eventually found that the two level Starbucks near the Empire State building had a few empty seats, just a few, so we did some reading there with our drinks while we waited for the bus.

Such a pretty city. Jory found New York similar to Toronto, and I agree they definitely have similar levels of liveliness. (made me proud of Toronto)

Very blurry, but the sight of Pentagram got me excited.

Our evening in Koreatown! We planned on getting some Korean Grill (which is huge in Toronto) but they did it differently at these places. It wasn't all you can eat, various iingredients, it was just priced by the plate. And we didn't really want a whole plate of one kind of meat for 30 dollars. That's no fun. We had ramen instead, at a non-ramen restaurant. It hit the spot, but next time I will look for something special.

We almost had dumplings, and I think we should have, this is definitely something I want to get next time. There was a place on this street that ONLY sold dumplings, and made them in the window!

At the Japanese restaurant, the food was okay, the place was cute, I tried to take a picture of us with also the tree right next to our table. We would have stayed here longer, but there was no alcohol yet or dessert, we didn't want to loiter...

It was a nice day, and I'm always excited to go back. I went one day recently for a meeting and later walked around SOHO by myself and then took the train home, it was really nice. (That day I ate lunch at Na Thai, and it was delicious)!

PS. I just put this post in a new category, travel, and I hope to fill it!